I chose to present this to the forum through my account because even as a new player I want to see New Eden grow and thrive, I have nothing to gain personally from these changes.
On first glance of New Eden’s current methods of operating, it is apparent that there is not a clear goal in mind of how to progress and allow for the growth of this server. With the combined thoughts of several older members of the Serenity/New Eden community (FishStickMystic,DevLuna,emmacoro,Shadowwolf,Glori,and fmata), we have concluded that in order for New Eden to succeeded there are necessary changes and additions that must be made; primarily, with the ideals of “Community Involvement” and “Transparency” in mind.
The current staff team suffers from multiple members being less active and temperamental. Within this group, it is believed that the following structure would be most beneficial:
Managing Administrator: Aaron
Administrators: Sayu, Jewitt, Harry
Moderators: Roxy, FishStickMystic, Matt
Monitor: DevLuna
This particular layout would also solve the existing difficulty that comes from differing time zones. As it currently stands, Sayu is the only member of the staff team located in America, causing for large gaps in time where staff cooperation is not possible.
Another important issue that is present, is that New Eden simply doesn’t hold up to other servers in term of offering unique gameplay opportunities. It is of this group’s personal belief that the document recently posted by Sayu (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxLdneKqnSFTRlpqTEFuTk9OYXM/view) demonstrates a plethora of beneficial ideas that would increase the attractiveness of the server to new players; primarily the idea of weekly dungeon events.
With the inclusion of these proposed changes to the server and it’s community, it is our personal belief that this server will finally begin to grow and prosper at it should be, and that the future of the community will be overwhelmingly positive.
Oh my god, I love all of the ideas in the google docx but the one that really speaks out to me is the dungeon. I would love to have it sooo badly! On a server I previously owned a while back I did a similar thing and that is what got that server popular. I would not be surprised if it was the same for New Eden, it may infact boost our reputation.
Now about the New staff roster idea I am down for that. I can see why Almighty would not be on there too and the reason would be because not only that he has been inactive as of late but his ways of handling situations are.. Hmm.. The best way I could think to say it is as he rushes the situation and tries to provoke instead of simmering down it. An example of that is the Donut saga if you know what I mean. I think others can back me up with other incidents as well.
About Sayu becoming Admin I am 100% down for it, I can't even begin to list all the reasons why but here is a few. He has been part of here for as long as Aaron has but I believe that he is mature enough and has the understanding of how to manage plugins and has the qualities of a staff member would be. Not only that but it will really help having an American staff member for when all others in different time zones that are not on to be there for the other's absence.
Just like Sayu, Roxy would be another great choice for promoting her to Mod because of the time zones and she also has those qualities of a staff member. (By the way the qualities I am talking about is the following: Patient, Reasonable, Mature, and doesn't lose their head easy as well as an active player that illustrates how others should act via leadership.) Not only that but she too has been here for a while and easily trustworthy of such a role, The same goes for FishStickMystic. About me being on the Monitor team I'll let you guys think about that yourselves and decide that however it's awesome to see me recommended.
I hope to see a whole lot more comments on this thread soon enough
Most of the current player base consists of players that joined long ago, keeping things fresh and new will not only keep them going back, but entice new players to join. Events like Dungeon raids and Building competitions keep the community engaged and interested in the server. Things like Building Competitions have been hosted by players and have been a fun way to engage with other players. While games like UCH have been hosted and lots of fun to play. Keeping these types of events running regularly would be extremely fun and exciting for both player new and old.
The staff teams suggested keeps current members of staff that are active in their current ranks, and puts trusted players into new ranks. While having staff in multiple regions will help players engage and communicate with the staff team without the time constraints that we deal with today. I believe that Caleb would serve as well fitted admin, in his moderation position. He has defused situations and kept players in check. Something that is very important to keep the community healthy. Would you like to play in a server where everyone despises each other? I wouldn't and I believe that most players wouldn't want to either. While player like Roxy, are well versed and can help new players adjust to the server and handle problems that may arise.
I believe that the changes that would be made should benefit players that have joined 5 years ago, as well as 5 minutes ago. Building a community that people want to be a part of.
Years ago, I remember joining a quaint and populous server with high expectation and kind members, growing in popularity, permanent players, and spectacular builds. This server encouraged players to be active members of the community through the use of an active forum (that players were often reminded of) and many mature, kind players and dozens of towns, game modes, and games they could play. A server that took communication and sharing ideas as a high priority, one many would enjoy being a part of.
I hate to reminisce on the old days of Serenity, New Eden's predecessor, but the current server just simply doesn't have that same engagement and communication as before, causing it to not be as populous. And while there are some things that affect Minecraft's community as a whole that, in turn, affects New Eden, like fewer people playing the game (especially including the older audience that would stay longer), the problems expressed in ShadowWolf13117's letter are also key reasons for its slowing growth as a server.
New Eden needs, and deserves, large changes to become a more engaging and popular server. These changes include more game modes and competitions, as stated in sayukimaNS' document, and more active and committed staff members. I very, very much hate to offend any staff member if you believe that I am targeting you, however, the staff list in ShadowWolf13117's letter successfully keeps any member that continues to be active and hardworking in their ranks, while also adding trusted, active players that could make the moderation team more constructive.
Adding sayukimaNS to the administration team, while still keeping Jewitt and harryharry6, will make this part of the team quite fantastic. This continues to keep the hard-working administrators of before to continue their position while adding sayukimaNS, a hard-working, active, and mature player who deeply cares about this community and has knowledge of managing plugins. As mentioned by DevLuna, this also fixes a time zone problem that the staff team now has; many of the members live in Europe while only one (or two, if including RoxykinsIII) lives in North America. This creates a large gap of hardly any moderation, making it an issue, say if sayukimaNS were to not be able to moderate for a moment.
Even if sayukimaNS were to become an administrator, this problem would also be solved with the letter's changes for the moderation team, along with many others. It's agreed upon by many that RoxykinsIII would be an incredible addition to the team, as she is active, mature, and thoughtful. She demonstrates the attributes of a moderator very well. Also, as I have stated before, she lives in the United States, serving as another player that could help fix the time-zone-gap issue. I cannot speak for myself, although I can say that if DevLuna wanted the position stated in the open letter, she would definitely replace me on my personal list if she were to be slightly more active. So, I can only guess why I have been decided to be a part of the moderation team, and that would probably include my long presence in this community and trustworthiness... ((Hopefully, I'm not tooting my own horn here...))
The choices for the new staff team are very solid. However, even though it's the longest section of my response, the staff is not really the largest part of New Eden's issue. The changes expressed in sayukimaNS' document are much needed, especially the voting system replacement (since its current form puts the server in jeopardy) and the Spawn City Shops (though, in my opinion, also including player shops like in Serenity). Many other ideas in the document will be beneficial to the server's growth, except for the DERPI system (unlesss it becomes non-PVP or something... it just rubs me the wrong way). Those ideas in the document bring a new, fun experience on New Eden. It makes some aspects of the game more convenient and others more engaging. My favorites are the "Weekly Dungeon Raids" and the "YouTube Let's Play!" (Though it would be hard getting watchers for the latter, heh...). The Weekley Dungeon Raids seem like they would be very fun!
By the way, although this might be an unpopular opinion, I think the server should also add other games other than Survival Games and Hardcore Day/Weekend if it can. You know, like SkyWars, SkyBlock, SG Teams, etc... I don't know. Just throwing it out there.
Anyway, I believe these changes for the staff team and the server's gameplay expressed in ShadowWolf13117's open letter will greatly benefit the server and turn it into a community that new players, and old players, would want to actively be in and stay in. Being on this server for so long (almost 6 years!), I want it to grow, prosper, and be the best it can be. Thank you for reading.
"Whether a fish lives in a clear stream or a water ditch, so long as it continues swimming forward, it will grow up beautifully." ~ Korosensei
I wanted that from the beginning that New Eden started and I already have said that a lot but I would really enjoy player shops. Maybe you could merge the two into player shops in the spawn city? But only Builder+ could create for reasons as in an explorer can't just edit the whole place.. It would wont be too tricky to pull off but I think that it could work using WorldGuard/Regions, it will take some time defining and flagging all the regions and you probably would want to name them to keep track however you could do it.
I feel like minigame suggestions can be a whole new topic on its own and I would love to see more! However SG is already massively buggy on its own with its problems with invisible players that you can't even hit... So unless that gets fixed I don't have any hopes with minigames on New Eden at all, I'd rather switch servers at that point for minigames.
----- This response is on behalf of the Management Team, please read this but if you want to skip it there’s a TLDR at the end, please also note that Jewitt has asked not to be involved in this discussion to avoid any personal conflict of interest --
Hello all
First of, thank you for taking the time to engage in the direction of New Eden, when it comes to building communities that’s one of the best things that can happen, when its members take the time to actively involve themselves in trying to improve the direction, and we appreciate everyone who does.
First off on a general note about the staff and activity, we very recently went through a small re-organisation of the staff to address some issues, this will be explained more in the End of Month Update post. It is important to remember that a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes such as software development, marketing, maintaining servers; which takes a lot of effort but is not noticed or publicised simply because it would not make sense to explain in news posts that “today we performed some optimisations and did some marketing” which unlike with features that we add you can’t directly see these benefits, but without all this essential work that goes on behind the scenes things would run a lot less smoother. As a result to the community it may look like things aren’t happening or people aren’t doing things, when in fact things are happening every day, they just aren’t noticeable.
A couple of specific points though, while not always noticeable the Development Team is a very important team and will continue to be going forward as we look to expand this. Expanding the Development Team and adding Developers will be our main focus when it comes to staff changes going forward, as this will let us continue to develop new features and get things out each month even faster. Additionally Monitor is not a staff rank, Monitor is a sub-rank we give to people in the community that we trust and is a lot more fluid than staff ranks, in other words people may gain or loose Monitor at any point.
From the point of view of the Management Team, we are happy with the current staff structure, if anyone has any issues with any particular staff members those should be privately brought to a member of the Management Team, where they can be properly addressed.
Regarding time zones, it used to be the case (back on Serenity) that we needed a lot of Moderators, but now that simply isn’t the case thanks to a combination of Monitors, the new (much larger) map and the Land Claims system. It is also thanks to Discord that staff can very easily be contacts to deal with an issue without needing to be in-game constantly. Now a days griefing is virtually non-existent, and the majority of issues are in chat. A combination of all of these has meant that we can still deal with issues effectively while maintaining a small but effective staff team, where timezones are no longer a large issue. Our general way of working is not to promote people to staff ranks because it would be nice to see them in the rank, but to promote when there is an identifiable need for someone in that role, Moderators specifically have access to a lot of tools and maintaining a small team means we can limit any possible issues that may come up. As I mentioned this means our focus is on building the Development Team who will prove even more important going forward, and not on building the Community and Management Teams. Although as ever we are regularly reviewing the staff structure so changes should be expected without notice.
Regarding new features, we have already seen the document written by Sayu, many of it’s suggestions we like and had already planned to implement in the future. From the start of New Eden our goal has been to build an experience to rival the best Minecraft servers, somewhere you never get bored of, with lots of options for game play features. We have a lot of ideas of things that we would like to do in the future, but unfortunately in order to build a unique and engaging experience it takes time. A large amount of features on New Eden are now entirely custom developed to create that unique experience we want to achieve, but this doesn’t happen overnight. Myself, Doomworks, Trumpline, and others have collectively over the years spent hundreds of hours sitting writing Java code to develop the unique features you see such as the Voting and Perks system, Land and Block protections, the large system the runs the mini-games we currently offer (which is due for a large re-write soon to fix many issues and allow us to add more games), and other features. So while we want to create a fun and engaging experience, to do it properly requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention the fact that we all have lives and other jobs that take priority.
A specific note on the voting and perks system, as I previously explained to Sayu, our system was specifically designed to be compliant with the changes Mojang made a couple of years ago, before that on Serenity the perks you now get from voting were Donor perks, so the current Perks system you see now is a direct response to the changes Mojang made. This week I did however review our system and all evidence provided and from a legal point of view can confirm our system is still fully compliant with the Mojang EULA and the Commercial Guidelines published on the Mojang website. If anyone has any other clarifying questions on the legal issues of perks and voting feel free to talk to me directly.
On a final note, we’ve been working really hard this month on some new changes to game play which I think you all will love, so stay tuned for this month’s End of Month update as well as future updates!
TLDR:
Regarding the obvious problem people seem to have with me, I think I have done a satisfactory job as a member of staff, despite my clear invactivity on the server. I have done what I thought was best but majority of the time I don't see situations which I need to try and resolve. With Donut, I'm not the only person who teased her, a lot of members on the servers made jokes about her, many times more than I have. I apologised for my behaviour and even tried to get people to stop. I've said to Aaron many times that I don't feel like I belong as staff. And I also think I don't belong on this server anymore. But he has convinced me many times that he thinks I'm doing okay.
Edit: I would also like to add the Eleven issue when he had a rather aggressive depressive episode. I think I contributed a lot into helping with that situation and afterwards, I proposed a plan for the staff to look out for certain symptoms of mental issues such as depression. As I believe part of our responsibility is to look out for the wellbeing of our players.
Secondary Edit: I have asked to be removed from staff which has gone through, I hope my replacement will be better than I was.
Oink